The Moment After
by ichthyosaurus
Summary: Nate Ford is an incurable bastard; his team is madder than wet hens. Post-finale


How many Sophie Devereauxs were there in the world? She couldn't be sure, but there were at least a few, and without any conceit this particular Sophie could say she lay better claim to the name than any other, naturally born Sophie D- around. She made it memorable. She'd chosen the name with care—distinctive and classy, yet without the obnoxious flash of a novel heroine. Hardison once joked that she put the Sophie in Sophistication. Right after that Parker had started calling him Hardwaredison. Sophie had once wondered what kind of a name Nate Ford was, and how a man could be content to let the enormity of his life and talents be confined to two syllables that weren't even of his own choosing.

The helicopter lifted away, the pilot guiding it with an uncertain glance back to the crumpled figure surrounded by rapidly increasing guns. "Wasn't there one more of you?" he yelled over the noise. She told him she'd come back with four. "That him on the deck?"

Sophie looked around and her last glance of Nate was a man slumped against the rails, whether in relief or exhaustion she couldn't say. "Keep going," she heard Eliot say, and the pilot didn't question but sped the helicopter expertly away. She was glad she hadn't been the one to say it, there was an awful finality to his words.

The roar of the helicopter was a blessing. The thought of the eventual silence that would weigh on them when they were alone was too much at the moment. She blinked back tears. Next to her, Hardison and Parker were stony-faced, and Eliot frowned out the window. This was the easy part, when they were still angrier than they were devastated.

Eventually the helicopter deposited them on the roof of a high-rise. Sophie handed the pilot a heavy envelope and he took it, feeling absurdly guilty—like he should give her back a fifth, since he'd only delivered four of the promised five. But thankfully she turned away before he could put his foot in his mouth. Once they were clear he lifted off again, and he felt depressed for a reason that wasn't clear to him.

After the dust settled they stared at each other for a long time. "I have a car on the ground," Sophie said finally.

"To go where?" Parker asked flatly.

Originally, Sophie had planned to answer "the airport," then present the tickets with a flourish and bow, grinning. Paris, of course. She drew the tickets out of her pocket—under assumed names, obviously; with Tom and Sarah Jane Baker seated together—and held them out loosely. One ticket too many. Nobody moved to take them, and she let them fall out of her hand and be carried away by the wind.

For a long moment, no one said a word. They faced each other in a circle the way they always seemed to, except where Nate was supposed to be there was only air. Like a ghost, or like he was never there at all.

Eliot looked mean. Parker looked distant. Hardison was distracted, upset. Sophie felt like a stranger. For one horrible dizzying moment it was like they'd never met before, and they were all their old hard suspicious selves, time and trust falling away from them. A visual anecdote: peeling, cracking paint on a da Vinci, obscuring what was once clear and lovely and revealing the stiff coarse panel that had always been there, hidden.

They were just so breathlessly angry. Sophie had no doubt that Eliot would clock Nate were he to show up just then. She almost looked over her shoulder, half-expecting he'd appear out of nowhere, smile his knowing, exasperating arcane smile and explain the con and how he'd just fooled everybody, and how could they doubt him, didn't they know he always had a backup plan?

Except this time there was no backup plan, no last game. Just... an end. A surrender. They'd left in the helicopter, but really he'd left _them_. That's how it felt. How could he think they'd be okay without him?

Sophie tried to speak but the words died before they could be said. Parker started to pace. Eliot stared a furious burning hole into the cement.

Around them, the blue stretched away endlessly. The building they'd landed on was a stately tower of wealthy apartments, thus the helicopter pad on top, and the pool laying drained on the roof.

"I'm going to kill him," Eliot snarled at last, and slapped his hands to his sides. "All that time, all those things he said—don't quit, don't walk away, we never give up—he berates us, he pushes us, and then he surrenders. He surrenders!" He spat this incredulously.

"To _Sterling_," said Parker.

"Was it even worth it?" Hardison asked. "Did we even take down the mayor?" He looked around at them all, hands spread wide. Nobody had an answer. Nobody was sure, in the end, what they had accomplished. That was worse than anything. "Culpepper's tied to Kadjic, tight," he continued, trying to answer his own question. "Kadjic goes down, so does his Holiness. Right?"

Eliot shrugged in irritation. "Does that matter now? What do we do?"

He directed this at Sophie, who an hour ago had had such a grasp on the situation. An hour ago, everything had been going to be fine. Fine as it applied to them, anyway. She wasn't sure, for all that he was capable of, that Nate could have lived the rest of his life as a fugitive. He'd always been the one others had to look over their shoulder for.

They were quiet again for a moment, uncertainty dulling the resentment. Nate Ford: what a stupid, simple name, Sophie thought, for somebody so unpredictable. She was supposed to rescue _him__!_ But in a second split smaller than an atom, he'd turned it around and become the rescuer. Sophie was unbelievably affronted. He just had to be the damn hero.

Somewhere just then, Nate was probably sitting in the back of a town car very much like the one they'd just stolen, hands cuffed in front of him. Smiling, likely as not. She'd seen the look on his face before they'd left, and it wasn't of a beaten, broken man—the man she thought she'd be coming back to.

"Arrogant son of a bitch," she said out loud. "He's probably thought he's won."

"Sterling?"

"Nate."

"I never bitched him out about Lucille," Hardison suddenly said, contrite. "I kept meaning to. I was going to make him buy me a new van. And an air freshener. Sandalwood."

"What would you call it?" Parker asked, a little mechanically. "The van."

Hardison thought. "C.O.B. Cranky Old Bastard."

Amazingly, they all laughed. It was weak, but at least they felt a little less sick.

"Do you think it's safe to go back to his apartment?" Parker asked. "Old Nate is still on the wall. And I left my plant there."

"The plant is fake," Eliot said gruffly. "It doesn't need watering."

Parker frowned. "So?"

"The FBI might still be keeping watch on it," Hardison warned them.

"No, Nate would make sure they wouldn't," Eliot said. "Or Sterling would, anyway. He wouldn't jeopardize Nate's testimony—at least not until Nate's already given it." He stared around at them all. "We're clear on this, then. We're not going anywhere."

No, Sophie thought, we're not. We hate him but just a little less than we love him. She couldn't wait to slap him again, this time so hard his head would spin. "Hardison, don't you own that building? You have to go back anyway."

Hardison screwed up his face. "I am this close to evicting that guy in 4A. You know he's called me three times in the middle of the night? About his cable? And then he whines that I'm spending too much time fixing Nate's apartment and not his. I will flood 4A's toilet so help me God."

Automatically, they started walking towards the roof exit. "Being a landlord is a big responsibility," Parker said to Hardison. "Pipes. Lightbulbs."

"It's a pain in the ass," he snorted. "If Nate thinks I'm going to install that new cable system he can forget it. I am tripling his rent. I am painting an Older Nate. Ancient Nate. Wrinkly as a prune. And bald."

Sophie and Eliot walked behind them, Sophie fighting a smile and the urge to cry.

* * *

Not sure if it's a standalone or not, but I had to write something!


End file.
